


100 Tales: Winter

by Velyrhorde (Ryan_Writes)



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryan_Writes/pseuds/Velyrhorde
Summary: What's an outlaw to do when he's snowed in at the Devil's Hold hideout for the Winter? Come up with a scheme to make even more money, of course! And it all started with a dime novel ...





	100 Tales: Winter

Gray clouds hovered just overhead, reflected in the frozen stream. A chill wind sent whirls of snow drifting across the hillside. Hannibal Heyes pulled the curtains closed and returned to the warmth of the fireplace. 

“The way I see it,” the Kid said, spreading the blueprint out over the tabletop, “we’ll have to get through the back door, then worry about the bars once we’re inside.”  
Heyes sipped at his glass of whiskey, leaned back in the chair, and watched the flames. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Heyes, are you even listening to me?”

“Kid, we can’t pull that job until Winter’s done. Why worry about it now?”

“Somebody’s got to worry. The boys never think about anything past today and you’re in a funny mood lately.”

Heyes stretched out his legs to the fire. “I ain’t in a funny mood. I just prefer spending my cold Winter afternoons doing something besides target shooting or planning a job that’s not due for months.”

“What else is there? We’re not exactly living in the big city out here.”

Heyes set down his glass. He cleared his throat. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking about that book we saw last time we were in town.”

The Kid frowned. “What book? You mean that dime novel?”

“ _Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry Meet the Apache Princess_.” Heyes looked as if the very title left a bad taste in his mouth. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, paper-bound booklet. 

Kid Curry’s eyebrows rose. “You bought it? For God’s sake, why?”

Heyes sat up straight. His brows lowered, his brown eyes flashed. “Research.”

The Kid dropped into the other chair. “All right, Heyes, I’ll bite. What have you got in mind?”

“I read the thing. It’s just as horrible as it sounds.” He shoved out of his seat to pace the room. “I’ll tell you, Kid, if I can’t put together something better than this crap, I’ll eat your hat.”

“You’re planning to write a dime novel? How much of that whiskey have you been drinking?”

“Hear me out, Kid. How hard could it be? All I have to do is jot down some of our real adventures. Any publisher worth his salt would snap them right up. Right?”

No reply.

“Right, Kid?”

Kid Curry refilled his own glass, took a slow sip. “You think you can just sit down here and whip out a book, am I right? That’s what you’re planning to do this Winter?”

“Well … yeah, that’s what I’m planning to do with part of it.” Heyes got that stubborn look on his face that let The Kid know it was useless to try to argue. “You got a problem with that?”

“Are you still planning to hit the bank after the snow melts?”

“Of course I am, Kid. You don’t think I’m planning to go straight, do you? I’m just thinking up another angle to make us some money, that’s all.”

“Writing dime novels?”

“Selling dime novels, Kid. Selling them.” Heyes dropped back into his chair, his ever-expressive hands busy accenting his argument. “I figure I can put out a book in a month or so. Leaves us plenty of time to plan that bank job.”

Once Heyes got the bit in his teeth, it was useless to try to argue with the man.

“Have it your way, Heyes. At least now I know why you bought that box of paper at the mercantile.”

Two days later, The Kid came into the main room of the cabin just in time to duck a pencil sailing past his head. He studied the thing, now sticking precariously in a crack in the wall. “Something the matter, partner?”

Heyes wiped the frown off his face. “Not a thing, partner. This writing’s easy as pie.”

He collected the pencil and sat back down at the table with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The Kid sauntered behind his chair and peered down at the top sheet of the stack of papers in front of Heyes. Looked to him like pretty near half the page was scratched out or written over.

Heyes gave a grumpy huff and flipped the stack upside down. “You’re not supposed to try to read a man’s writing ‘til he’s done.”

“What are you calling this novel, anyhow?”

Heyes brightened a bit. “I thought I’d start at the beginning. _Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry Rob the Fort Worth Bank_.”

“Seems logical.” The Kid flipped the papers back over again. “You having trouble remembering it?”

“I am not having trouble remembering anything. For your information, writing isn’t just talking with a pencil. You’ve got to make it exciting for the reader.”

“Way I remember it, it was pretty exciting by itself. I was convinced that deputy was going to hear us and come running.”

Heyes shrugged. “Well, I can’t just say ‘Kid Curry was worried the deputy would hear them.’ A real author puts in all sorts of details like what it sounded like when the deputy went past the window or how much we sweated waiting for him to go on by.”

The Kid dropped into the other chair, interested despite himself. “So what’s giving you so much trouble?”

Heyes heaved a sigh. “Blamed if I know. I reckon it ain’t as easy as it sounded like. I’ll get halfway down a page and realize I’m sounding like our old schoolmaster behind the lecture podium. Or I’m just putting down the bare bones and leaving all the detail out.”

“Well, I reckon if it was easy, everybody’d be doing it.” The Kid picked up a sheet and read. “What’s all this ‘Dear Reader’ crap?”

Heyes yanked the page back. “That’s how you’re supposed to write. If you read more books, you’d know that.”

“I’ll leave the reading to you. Maybe you ought to get yourself an angle, like we do on a job.”

“What sort of angle?”

The Kid scratched his head. “I dunno. You’re the writer. I was just thinking maybe you don’t want your book to be like everybody else’s. I mean, you don’t talk like that so why write like that?”

Heyes’ eyes widened. He opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking. He grabbed the stack of paper and flipped it over. “I think you’ve got something there, Kid. Now lemme alone so I can write.”

Another week passed, along with a snowstorm that buried the cabins and necessitated the digging of pathways to the mess hall and outhouses. The Kid returned from breaking up yet another fight between two members suffering from cabin fever to find a smug grin on his partner’s face and a stack of papers at his elbow.

“Read this and see what you think,” Heyes commanded, handing over the stack.

The Kid pulled his chair in front of the fireplace and settled in. He didn’t read as quickly as Heyes. The latter spent the time pacing the small room, rolling one cigarette after another, and all but biting his nails.

When The Kid dropped the last sheet of paper onto the stack at the side of his chair, Heyes pounced.

“Well?”

The Kid indulged in a long stretch. He scratched an itchy spot on his head. He rolled a smoke.

Heyes threw up both hands and whirled for the door. “I give up. Maybe Wheat can read.”

“It’s a right good story, Heyes. I didn’t have no trouble following you like I do some of them book writers.”

Heyes whirled back. His cheek dimpled. He dropped into his chair and leaned toward his partner. “You liked it? You really think it works?”

“Felt like I was right there in that bank again.”

Heyes let out a soft “whoosh” of air, leaned back and stretched his legs out toward the fire. “It sure was easier this time. I just pretended I was telling Kyle a bedtime story.”

“Without all the interruptions,” The Kid added. “Takes Kyle awhile to catch on, you know.”

You ain’t kidding. So you think I could sell it?”

“I think you might want to write it over a little more neatly. Your handwriting stinks.”

“But other than that, it’s good, right?”

The Kid took pity on his partner. “Yeah, Heyes, it’s pretty darn good. I think folks’d buy it.”

Heyes chuckled. He rubbed his hands together and collected his stack of papers. “I’ll just print it out so’s they can read it easy. Ought not take too long for the publisher to decide it’s a good deal.”

“Once we can get back to town, you mean.” The Kid scratched his head again. “How exactly are you planning to work that anyhow? You can’t sign it ‘Hannibal Heyes,’ you know.”

“For your information, lots of authors use a nom de plume.”

“Nom de what?”

Heyes rolled his eyes. “It’s a fancy term for alias. Professional authors use them so they don’t have to print their real names on the books.”

“So what’s your nom de whatsis going to be?”

Heyes grinned. “I done figured out a good one. J and H for Jed and Heyes, then Price for the one on our heads.”

“J.H. Price? I reckon that’d work. How’re you gonna mail that thing to a publisher and get paid, though? You can’t hardly expect to march into a bank and open an account.”

“Why not? I can just tell ‘em we got a ranch out here somewhere.”

“Heyes, you worry me sometimes.”

“Why? We’d never hit our own bank, and nobody else is going to go for such a small town. They’d never suspect it had any real money in it.”

“Yeah, but trusting your money to a bank?”

Heyes waved the question away. “Oh, we won’t put all of it in there. Just enough so’s we ain’t carrying around thousands of dollars or nothing. We can keep out some spending money.”

“Thousands of dollars?” The Kid’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t know they paid that kind of money for one little old book.”

“Ain’t gonna be one little old book, Kid. I’m gonna write a whole series. They’ll probably be famous, like them Buffalo Bill novels we keep seeing.”

The Kid let out a soft whistle. “I reckon I didn’t take this serious enough. If’n you think we can get rich off dime novels, then you ought to keep writing them. What if you run out of stories about us?”

“Simple. I make up some new ones. _Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry Elude the Bannerman Agency. Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry Find Gold. Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry and the Haunted House_.”

“Sometimes you scare me, Heyes. You’re too smart for your own good.”

Heyes grinned. He leaned back in his chair and put both hands behind his head. “I think I’m gonna like being a famous author. Seeing folks buy up all my books and not have a clue who really wrote ‘em.”

“It’d be a good con, all right.”

“Let me get busy printing this first one over, then. Why don’t you and the boys go do some target shooting or take a little hunting trip? That ought to take some of the energy out of ‘em.”

“Good idea, Heyes. We’ll leave you to your scheming, then.”

The Kid left him plenty of time. He and the boys did go on a hunting trip and by the time they returned, loaded with enough meat for a mid-Winter feast, Heyes had finished neatly printing his book.

“Now, about that bank job,” he said, handing The Kid his roll of blueprints. They spent the last month plotting the demise of the Silver Springs bank. As soon as the pass cleared, Heyes rode into town and mailed his manuscript to the same publisher responsible for the dime novel that had spurred his idea.

“They’ll probably jump at the chance to print a real book instead of that Apache princess crap,” he told his partner.

Spring rolled over the land. The streams swelled with snowmelt and flowers bloomed across the hills. By the time Silver Springs donated several thousand dollars to the Devil’s Hole Gang’s coffers, Heyes had practically worn a trail in the carpet of the main room of the cabin.

He rode out once a week to check the mail. And once a week he moped around the cabin, smoking too much and going through their whiskey supply too quickly. The Kid finally had enough.

“Heyes, you know it takes nearly two weeks for a package to even get to New York, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And it’s just likely them publishers got a couple more books they’re trying to read over, ain’t it?”

Heyes tossed his cigarette into the fireplace. “You know how I hate waiting.”

“Well, you ain’t got much choice this time. Unless you want to take the next train and hold ‘em up at gunpoint so’s they’ll read your story next.”

Even Heyes had to see the humor in that. His cheek dimpled. “I’d let you handle the gunplay, Kid.”

“Then let me handle the worrying, too. If they like the book, they’ll let you know soon as they can. If they don’t like it, you can just find another publisher to send it to.”

“True enough. I guess I can stand the suspense.”

Of course, as soon as Heyes quit worrying about it, he returned from town the following week with a grin on his face and a package in his saddlebags.

“They said it’s a ‘fresh new voice,’ Kid. They want to see some more books and they’ll buy as many as I can write.”

He handed his partner one of the newly-printed novels from the package. The Kid studied the detailed drawing on the cover. “I never figured us to have mustaches.”

“Better this way. Now everybody’ll think this is what we look like and nobody’ll suspect us at all.”

“We sure do look old, too.”

“Yeah, I reckon everybody thinks we’re middle-aged or something.”

“We did start kind of young.”

“Another reason nobody’ll suspect us.”

The Kid flipped through the novel, studying the illustrations. “We sure do look mean. I’d hate to tangle with these two desperadoes.”

Heyes grinned. “And J.H. Price has two hundred dollars in his brand new bank account. And the publisher says if we sell all of the books, I’ll get even more every time they print another batch.”

“Heyes, I’m impressed. And all you got to do is sit down and write out what really happened to us. That’s almost as easy as robbing a bank.”

“Easier. I don’t have to plan nothing out ahead of time for a book. Not so long as I’m writing the truth, at least.”

“I reckon we got enough adventures already to keep you writing for a year or so.”

Heyes got a calculating look in his brown eyes. “At least. I figure I can put out a book every two or three months. That’d be almost a thousand dollars a year. More if they have to print extra books.”

The Kid clapped his partner on the back. “Congratulations, Mr. Price. You’re an author.”

Heyes got a startled expression on his face. “I am, ain’t I? Wouldn’t my old Ma be surprised?”

“Probably not. She always did think you were smarter than anybody else.”

“Well, she was right about that.” Heyes stacked the sample novels in the small bookshelf beside the fireplace. “We’re going to need a bigger shelf pretty soon.”

His partner held out the book in his hand. When Heyes stared at him blankly, he grinned.

“I want an autographed copy.”


End file.
